


too young and heads too strong

by hepaticas



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hepaticas/pseuds/hepaticas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genderswapped Highschool AU.</p><p>Marcy Zuckerberg and Elena Saverin meet in their sophomore year of highschool, when they are both fifteen. - - Elena says, “Never have I ever masturbated to Han Solo, Dusty.” Chris snorts and Dusty groans and says, “I told you that in confidence!” at the same time that Marc does a shot and says, “That’s bullshit, Lena, everybody masturbates to Han Solo.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	too young and heads too strong

Marcy Zuckerberg and Elena Saverin meet in their sophomore year of highschool, when they are both fifteen. It’s November and they’re halfway into the first semester when Elena comes stumbling into Marcy’s third period Trig class, all too-long limbs and long fluffy hair. She’s holding too many books, her backpack has fallen off her shoulder and is hanging by one strap in the crook of her elbow, there’s snow in her hair and she is wearing a pencil skirt,  _a fucking pencil skirt,_ with a button down shirt tucked into it, and yet somehow the most ridiculous thing about her is that she is grinning from ear to ear, the sort of grin that looks like it would be painful if held for too long. She shakes her long dark hair and adjusts her books and then she turns and says, sort of to the class as a whole, “Sorry I’m late!”

Mr. Howard, the teacher, looks at her like he would like nothing more than to give her detention and her smile fades slightly, but he just says, “Do you have a pass?” She nods frantically and shifts her books until they’re under one arm so that she can dig through her backpack and produce a little blue late slip. Mr. Howard doesn’t even look at it, just drops it beside his overhead projector and says, “Alright. You can take the empty seat by Marcy and Dusty.”

She looks like she’s about to ask who Marcy and Dusty are, but then a small girl with long, red hair waves at her from the corner, grinning broadly and, well, that answers that question. The red head introduces herself as Dusty, grinning as she says, “My parents were big Dusty Springfield fans or something, I guess.”

Elena smiles and says how nice it is to meet the other girl and asks what they’ve covered in the class so far and can Dusty tell her where her next class is, and Dusty lets her flip through her notes, which are peppered with doodles of aliens and cartoon characters, and says sure, she can tell her where her next class is, and asks where she moved from and says  _oh my god, Brazil, are you serious, do you speak another language, oh my god you speak Portuguese, seriously, that is so cool._ The other girl at the table is quiet, scribbling in her notebook through their conversation and Elena wonders if maybe she is being rude, not including her in the conversation, so she smiles and says, “You must be Marcy?”

Marcy looks up and Elena gets a glimpse of sharp cheekbones and stupidly blue eyes before she says, “Marc. I go by Marc. Marcy is a stupid name.” She looks at Elena for a moment and then says, “You were in my homeroom this morning. You’re a sophomore, too. What are you doing in this class? This is an advanced class.”

Dusty looks like she wants to throttle Marc, but Elena just grins and shrugs. “I’m good at math.” She says simply, because she is, she always has been. Marc looks skeptical for a moment and then she turns back to her notebook and returns to her scribbling. Dusty shrugs in a way that clearly says,  _she’s just like that_ , and Elena smiles and takes notes, pausing now and then to watch Marc chew on the drawstring of her hoodie as she writes.

-

It turns out that, with the exception of their first two classes, Marc, Dusty and Elena have identical schedules. Dusty seems absolutely thrilled by this, because ‘ _yay, new friend!’_ and she bounces along in front of Marc and Elena as they walk to English, grinning and pointing out landmarks around the school.  _Over there is where the stoners go to get high,_  she says, and  _there is the vending machine, if you kick it just right it will give you a diet coke for free._ Marc, for her part, is mostly silent, which is okay really, because Dusty talks enough for all of them. She walks with her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and occasionally one of her curls falls in her eyes and she blows it away with a huff of breath through her mouth. At some point while they’re walking, Elena reaches out and tugs one of the short curls and says, “You have great hair. You should grow it out.” Marc turns to stare at her like she is a particularly interesting exhibit in a museum and, too late, Elena realizes they don’t really know each other and that was probably a weird thing to do, but then Dusty turns around, laughing and says, “She cut it off solely because she likes to be contrary. She used to wear it long, but then one day she joked to Eric about cutting it off and he told her not to, because it would make her look like a dude, so she did it because, and I quote, ‘he may be my boyfriend, but he has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do with my appearance.’”

Elena raises an eyebrow. “It doesn’t.” She says, and then, when Dusty and Marc give her identical confused looks, she adds, “Make you look like a dude. It doesn’t. It looks nice.” Not that she’s thought about it or anything, but it’s the nice thing to say, the polite thing to say, and anyways it  _does_ look nice, now that she’s thinking about it. Marc just shrugs and Dusty gives the two of them a very strange look, but then they walk into the English classroom and Dusty is distracted because,  _come on, Elena, I’ll introduce you to Chris!_

Chris turns out to be short for Christine, and Christine turns out to be a very tall blonde who smiles at Elena and heaves a series of exasperated but fond sighs as she watches Marc and Dusty squabble over who gets to sit on the cushy looking arm chair in the back of the class – neither of them do, in the end, because Elena rolls her eyes and flops onto it herself and Dusty pouts and Marc looks put out, but neither of them argue. Chris looks pleased as Marc and Dusty settle into seats at the desk in front of the chair and she looks at Elena with a tentative smile like she thinks maybe she’s found an ally and then she reaches out without even looking and slaps Dusty’s hands away from where she was trying to copy Chris’s answers to some assignment and yes, Elena decides, she likes these people.

-

Things progress pretty easily from there. Elena has three classes with Chris and five with Marc and Dusty and within a week, she can hardly remember a time before Chris and Dusty were her friends. She learns that Chris, Marc and Dusty have been friends since elementary school and that Marc and Dusty are programmers, and Dusty watches too much television and Chris is terrified of bugs. She helps Chris make sure that the other two occasionally eat something at lunch other than French fries and mountain dew, and Chris stares at her like she is a fucking  _wizard_ every time she convinces Marc to eat some broccoli.  _Persistence,_ she says when Chris asks her how she does it,  _persistence is the key. She knows I’m not going to give up and that makes me too annoying to argue with._

It’s easy to be friends with Chris and Dusty. It’s not as easy to be friends with Marc. This is in part because Marc is usually scribbling code in her notebook for later, when she can go home and type it up properly, but mostly it’s because Marc is the most ridiculous person Elena has ever met. Marc is like a particularly hard brain teaser and Elena is determined to solve her. She says things sometimes that are so  _incredibly_  offensive, or at least they  _would be_ , if not for the fact that most of the time – _not all the time_ , no, sometimes she _means_ to offend, that much is very obvious, but _most_  of the time she doesn’t seem to realize why anyone would be offended by them. She speaks very quickly and she can be cutting and mean in a way that Elena never can and sometimes she looks at Elena like she is the stupidest thing in the world, like she has just dribbled on her chin or declared that she is a twilight fan or something, and yet she still seeks Elena out in the cafeteria and sits next to her in classes and on one occasion, when she and Chris and Dusty are discussing a game night at Marc’s place, it is  _Marc_  who turns and says, “Do you want to come, Lena?”

And that’s another thing;  _Lena._ Marc calls her Lena. No one has ever called her Lena before. There’s been ‘El’ and sometimes her mother calls her ‘Ellie’ – just her mother, never her father, he calls her ‘Elena’,  _always –_  and some of her cousins in Brazil called her ‘Ella,’ but no one has ever called her Lena. Marc says it like it’s natural though and Dusty quickly picks it up, followed by Chris and then everyone she meets in the school is calling her Lena and  _seriously,_  how did that happen? It’s alright though. She likes it. It’s okay. It’s good.

She and Marc do become friends, somehow. In between jabs at her intelligence and accusations of cheating at Mario Kart – because Elena  _always wins_  and Marc cannot fathom losing, so clearly she was cheating, but how do you even cheat at Mario Kart, anyways? – they develop a tentative friendship that quickly grows until they are absolutely  _inseparable._ They walk together in the halls, Elena bumping Marc’s hip with her own and Marc looking kind of confused but happy and Elena spends weekends at Marc’s house, laying on her stomach on Marc’s bedroom floor, kicking one leg in the air and chewing on a pen while muttering about not understanding some Chemistry assignment or another and Marc rolls her eyes behind her laptop and says, ‘you are such an idiot’ but she smiles fondly and later, when Elena comes back from the bathroom, the correct answer is written on her assignment in Marc’s messy handwriting. Sometimes Marc will get frustrated with something she’s coding or with an assignment or with some stupid social situation that she simply cannot compute and Elena will put a hand on her neck and twirl one of her curls around her finger and she’ll relax, lean back into the touch and sigh and Chris and Dusty will look at them like they are a fascinating new species of monkey or something, but it’s okay, because that’s what friends do, or whatever.

It works.

-

One weekend over winter break Chris’s parents go out of town and the four of them gather in Chris’s bedroom, which is kind of ridiculously pink and frilly, and they sneak tequila and rum from the Hughes’ liquor cabinet and play Never Have I Ever with a set of Star Wars shot glasses that Dusty brought over. Elena, it seems, has done  _a lot_ of things that the others haven’t and by midnight she is a little sleepy and a lot drunk, leaning against Chris’s stupid pink bed and staring idly at what looks to be a very old N*SYNC poster on the wall. They’re still playing the game, though Dusty started sipping tequila straight from the bottle half an hour ago from where she’s laying with her head in Elena’s lap. Elena runs long fingers through Dusty’s hair, because it seems like the thing to do, and Marc, whose turn it is, stretches her legs out and says thoughtfully, “Never have I ever kissed a girl.”

All three of them do shots. Chris snorts as she throws hers back and says, “ _Obviously,”_ because Chris has a girlfriend and they kiss very publicly and very often. Dusty does her shot and then shrugs when Marc and Chris look at her funny, and says, “It was spring break, I was drunk, and she had _awesome_ tits.”

Which leaves Elena, but she doesn’t really want to talk about  _that_ , so instead she looks at Marc and says, “ _Never?_ Really?”

Marc shakes her head and says, “I mean – I’ve only ever kissed Eric, so.”

Dusty starts to laugh and mutters something into Elena’s thigh that no one really catches and Chris laughs, too, and then, on a whim, Elena leans across the shot glasses and bottles of tequila, grabs Marc’s face with one hand and plants a sloppy kiss on her. Marc is frozen for a second and then she kisses back, tentative. It lasts only for a few seconds and then Elena pulls back and says, “There. Now do a shot.”

Chris and Dusty stare at them. Marc does a shot. Elena says, “Never have I ever masturbated to Han Solo,  _Dusty."_ Chris snorts and Dusty groans and says, “I told you that in confidence!” at the same time that Marc does a shot and says, “that’s bullshit, Lena,  _everybody_  masturbates to Han Solo.”

-

A few days later, when they’re back in school, Elena is sitting on Marc’s bedroom floor with a knee pulled up to her chest, glowering at a set of Chemistry problems while chewing on the end of her pen and muttering in Portuguese when Marc stops typing suddenly, looks up from her laptop and says, “Why did you kiss me?”

Elena looks up, surprised, pen still hanging from her mouth and says, “What, you mean at Chris’s?” Marc doesn’t answer, just cocks her head in a way that Elena knows means,  _obviously, don’t be an idiot._  She drops the pen from her mouth to her hand and rests her chin on her knee. “I was drunk.” She says, because she was, and Marc nods sort of thoughtfully and goes back to typing.

Elena goes to get a soda from the kitchen and when she comes back Marc has done her Chemistry problems. She smiles. They don’t talk about it again.

-

Elena meets Eric for the first time when he comes over to Marc’s during a game night. They don’t get along. They don’t necessarily  _fight_  but Eric just seems to  _hate_  Elena, he is openly hostile towards her the entire hour he’s there, no matter how nice Elena is and when he has left, Dusty blinks and says, “What the hell, that was so weird,  _everyone_  likes Lena!”

Chris shakes her head, looks confused and Elena shrugs. “Not everyone.” She says, resting her chin on her knee and not looking away from the screen where she is playing some generic shooting game against Dusty. Dusty looks incredulous as she says, “ _Yes,_ everyone, oh my god, you’re like a woodland creature and  _everybody loves you!”_

 __Elena shrugs again and shoots Dusty’s pixelated avatar three times.

Marc eats a redvine and doesn’t say anything.

-

Chris, Marc and Dusty go camping over spring break and they invite Elena, but she doesn’t go. This is not because she doesn’t want to – she does – it is because she is going to visit family in Brazil for the week and there is really no getting out of it. When she tells them this in the cafeteria line at lunch, a few days before break starts, Chris and Dusty sigh and say, ‘that’s too bad’ but Marc narrows her eyes and says, ‘there must be  _some way,_  I’m sure if we just talked to your parents…’

Elena shakes her head frantically, because the idea of Marc talking to her father is absolutely terrifying, but she can’t really say that, so when Marc raises her eyebrow, Elena just says, “No, I mean, I – I want to go to Brazil?” It comes out like a question, so she coughs and says, “I have a lot of cousins I haven’t seen in a while. And um. Yeah. I mean. I want to go camping, too, but. I mean. I kind of miss my family. And Brazil. It’s my home, you know, and it’ll be nice to be able to speak Portuguese and –“

Marc cuts her off, rolls her eyes. “You speak Portuguese here all the time, Lena.” She says, missing the point, as always.

Elena smiles fondly at her and says, “I know,” and Marc looks at her expectantly, like she’s waiting for her to say, ‘you’re right, we’ll just talk to my parents,’ but Elena just puts some salad on Marc’s lunch tray and says, “If you eat that, I’ll write your essay on Magical Realism for English.”

They don’t talk about spring break again, but Elena knows Marc is upset, because she doesn’t text her all week. Later, she says they didn’t have cell phone service at the camp site and Elena nods even though she knows better, because Dusty kept sending her drunk texts with too many exclamation points, saying things like ‘ _marc keeps saying shes going 2 smother me in my sleep make her stop!!!’_ and  _‘omg Lena roasted marshmallows are so gud!!!! y do we eat anything else omg!!’_

-

Marc and Eric break up two weeks before the end of the year. Elena is at a dinner party her mother is throwing when it happens and she doesn’t find out that anything is going on until everyone is done eating, when she slips off and checks her phone and finds that she has six texts, three from Chris and three from Dusty and all of them equally distressed. They go like this:

 _Christine Hughes, 7:37  
hey where are you? marc is being weird_

 _Dusty Moskovitz, 7:39  
omg Lena eric dumped marc!!!! where r u?_

 _Christine Hughes, 7:41  
I don’t mean like normal weird I mean like weird weird_

 _Christine Hughes, 7:42  
check marc’s blog and then come over here seriously_

 _Dusty Moskovitz, 7:44  
Chris says 2 keep texting u until u respond!!! Lena Lena Lena Lena Lena where r u Lena_

 _Dusty Moskovitz, 7:45  
leeeeeeeeeeeeenaaaaaaaaaaaa LENA LENA LENA LENA LENA LENA_

She checks the time. It’s 7:46. Right on cue, her phone beeps with another text from Dusty –  _Lena Lena bo bena banana fana fo fena fee fi mo mena LENA! the name game!!!! –_ and she quickly texts back  _hi, sorry, family thing, reading marc’s blog now, will get away and see you soon_

Dusty texts back ‘Chris says thank god’ and then all the texts stop and Elena pulls up Marc’s blog on her phone, reads that night's entries with her eyes narrowed.  _Eric Albright is a dick,_ it begins and then,  _the truth is he has a nice face,_ and  _this year’s yearbook is open on my desk_ and  _Betty Olson is sitting on my bed and she had the idea of comparing some of them to farm animals_  and then  _it gives the whole thing a very Turing feel_ and then a narration of Marc’s adventures in hacking into the yearbook committee’s system to get pictures. Elena groans, exits out of Marc’s blog and then makes her excuses and slips out of the house, still dressed for the party. She texts Chris ‘ _on my way, Marc’s house right?’_ and a few minutes later Marc’s mother is smiling and letting her in and saying, “Hello, Elena! The girls are in Marc’s bedroom, you know the way.”

She does know the way. She walks quickly up the stairs and then goes into Marc’s bedroom without knocking. Betty Olson is, in fact, sitting on Marc’s bed. Chris is sitting on the floor watching something on Marc’s TV with the volume on mute while casting occasional nervous glances at the back of Marc’s head and Dusty is perched on the edge of the bed next to Betty, drinking something out of a plastic cup and reading code of Marc’s shoulder. Marc herself is seated at her desk, completely absorbed in what she’s doing.

Elena leans against the door, clears her throat. “Marc? What’s going on?”

Marc’s head snaps up. “Lena.” She says, and Elena rolls her eyes at the non-answer, says, “You and Eric split up?”

“How did you know that?” Marc asks, eyes narrowed.

Elena's eyes dart briefly to Chris and Dusty and then she says, “It’s on your blog,” and then there is  _are you alright_ and  _I need you_  and  _I’m here for you_  and a brief moment of feeling very foolish after  _no, I need the algorithm you used to rank chess players._

She fights only for a moment, clenching her jaw and glancing nervously at Chris and saying, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” and then she sighs and grabs a marker from Marc’s white board and writes the algorithm on Marc’s bedroom window.

Marc sends the site out to a few people and they watch the numbers go up and up and up as more and more people get on. They sit together around the computer, ranking other students themselves, because  _why not_ and Elena does not say anything about the fact that Marc did not include a picture of herself or of Chris or Dusty or even Elena. Betty Olson goes home around eleven when she discovers that her ranking is very low. At midnight the site crashes and they go to sleep.

-

On Monday, Marc is called into the principal’s office at lunch. Elena waits outside for her, texting Chris and Dusty while she waits. Marc comes out looking annoyed, but not like she’s  _really_ annoyed – more like she’s secretly pleased and just doesn’t want it to show. She informs Elena that she’s been suspended for a week because of her hacking and then shrugs and says  _whatever, the years almost over anyways, who cares?_

-

After that there’s finals and Elena barely has time to notice that Marc is missing from classes because  _mother of God she is so busy._ She sees Marc after school still and on weekends – Marc helps her study for Chemistry and codes while Elena groans about how she is going to  _bomb_  her history final, she just knows it. When finals are over, the four of them gather at Dusty’s house and use their combined allowances to buy some pot from some guy Chris knows and they smoke a joint together out of Dusty’s bedroom window, watching the tendrils of exhaled smoke curl up and up and up and disappear. At some point Chris and Dusty pass out on the floor and Elena ends up lying on her back on Dusty’s bed, wearing just her bra and a pair of shorts, both hands resting on her stomach. She’s not really aware of what’s going on in the room until Marc crawls up onto the bed next to her and lays perpendicular to her with her head on Elena’s bare stomach and then she becomes sort of hyper aware of everything from the feel of Marc’s curls on her skin to the sound of Dusty snoring. Marc grabs her hand and holds it up over her face and Elena hears a pen click and then Marc is writing on her skin in the almost pitch black room. She wonders, as Marc draws the pen across her wrist, how Marc can even see. Marc writes for a while and then hums, satisfied and puts the pen away but she’s still holding Elena’s hand. They stay like that, drifting in and out of sleep. At some point Elena gets sentimental and she clutches at Marc and whispers, “Promise we’ll be friends forever, Marc, swear it, you have to promise, swear, we’ll be friends forever, you and me.”

And Marc runs her fingertips over the back of Elena’s hand and says sleepily, “Yeah. Yeah, Lena, ‘course we will, I swear.”

They fall asleep and when Elena wakes up her arm is covered in code from her knuckles to her elbow. Marc is curled up against her for warmth, still holding her arm with one hand, only now the ink has smeared onto her skin, too.

-

School ends. The four of them spend the summer together. Elena makes 300,000 dollars betting on oil futures. Her father is not impressed. They steal candy bars from the AMPM and laugh at how rebellious they are. They go to the beach and Elena tugs Marc kicking and screaming into the icy water. They go to the amusement park and Marc refuses to ride the wooden rollercoaster, but looks at Elena funny when she comes off it flushed and laughing and throws an arm around Marc’s shoulders. Dusty rides a spinning ride too many times and vomits up her lunch into a trash bin and Marc is surprisingly tender as she holds her hair back and rubs her back. They go roller skating at the local skate rink – Marc and Dusty, it turns out, are genuinely awful skaters, but Chris and Elena are fantastic. They have backwards skate contests and they race each other and perform ridiculous dance routines while Marc and Dusty cling to the edges. Eventually Elena skates over and takes Marc’s hands, helps her get the hang of things and when she can skate on her own, Marc surprises everyone by helping a little girl who tugs at her sleeve and asks, ‘can you help me get out to the middle?’ She holds the little girl’s hand and takes her out and when the little girl manages to skate around the middle on her own, she gives Marc a high five that’s so forceful that it knocks Marc on her ass. Elena races over to her and asks,  _are you okay, Marc, seriously, are you okay,_ and Marc just laughs.

To make up for spring break, Elena suggests they all go camping together. Somehow they end up stretched out together on mats in the sand next to the river, a fire burning brightly. Chris rolls joints and says,  _the best thing to use for rolling paper is pages from the bible, but that always feels wrong to me and anyways we don’t have a bible, so newspaper will have to do._ They smoke and roast marshmallows and hot dogs and corn on the cob and then Dusty and Chris go skinny dipping when it gets dark and Elena and Marc lie on their backs, sides pressed together and stare at the stars and eat muffins that have got sand on them, but it doesn’t matter, they’re too high to notice. Elena is falling asleep when Marc nudges her shoulder with her own and says, “Lena. Lena, you swear too. Lena. Swear.”

Half asleep, Elena’s initial response is to say, “What?” and then she remembers Dusty’s bedroom and Marc drawing on her arm and she touches the back of Marc’s hand with the tips of her fingers and says, “Yes. I swear, Marc. You and me. Forever. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

-

Junior year is ridiculous. Elena has a total of two classes with Marc and only one with Dusty and none with Chris, and she’s  _so busy_ , all the time, she hardly sees them, and it’s  _ridiculous,_ Jesus Christ. She gets into a club – a stupid fucking high school club that likes to pretend they’re in college and haze new members and she wouldn’t really care about it except that when her father hears about it, he looks like he might pee himself, he’s so excited. So she has to deal with that, too, with hazing and notes slipped in her locker and it’s absurd. And then there’s a party at she-doesn’t-know-who’s house and it’s Caribbean themed and she’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts that feel way too short and she keeps tugging them down because she’s honestly not even sure they’re covering her ass, and Dusty puts a huge, ridiculous straw hat on her head when she walks in and they stand there, talking about Asian guys and algorithims and then Marc walks in, waves her over.

And that’s when everything changes.

-

theFacebook quickly becomes  _everything._ Marc has started bringing her laptop to class and coding, not even pretending to pay attention to teachers anymore. Chris has dark circles under her eyes from sleepless nights spent trying to nag Marc into doing homework. Dusty looks like she’s going to pass out all the time from trying to keep up with Marc’s pace. Elena is failing APUSH and she’s out a thousand dollars – which doesn’t really matter, she doesn’t care, because Marc said  _I need your help_ and  _someone ought to know the business stuff_ and  _CFO_ and more than all that she’d said ‘ _we,’_  over and over she’d said  _‘we’_  and what does a thousand dollars even matter? – and she’s exhausted from hiding report cards from her father and staying up all night writing essays and playing catch up, because she doesn’t have  _time_ to do work like normal anymore, she’s too busy making sure Marc eats and sleeps and doesn’t die and then people are starting to say  _facebook me_ and  _god,_ that’s fantastic.

Significantly less fantastic is a cease and desist letter from a lawyer representing the Winklevoss twins, who claim Marc stole the idea, the Winklevoss twins who are in college, the Winklevoss twins who are  _rich_  and in college and also happen to be hot blondes with big boyfriends and also they run track and play volleyball and are very capable of kicking Marc’s skinny ass, should they be so inclined and  _shit,_ they are so far in over their heads, it’s not even funny.

Elena wants to start advertising, but Marc keeps saying no, because  _we don’t even know what it is yet,_ except she can’t explain what the hell that  _means_ and Elena feels a little like she’s being used for her money, because her  _job_  is the business and Marc keeps saying  _it’s not a business yet_ , so what’s the point of having her around in the first place, but she tries to ignore it, because Marc is still saying ‘we’ and so it’s okay. It’s okay.

And then there’s winter break and the guys, the  _groupies,_ Christopher and his friend, Alan, and they say  _facebook me, we’ll get drinks,_ and they do, and Marc looks a little bored, like she’d rather be coding, but then they’re in the bathroom and Christopher is pushing Elena up against the stall door and kissing her and his hand is in her underwear and she can hear Marc and Alan in the next stall and Marc is making these little breathless sounds that Elena is trying not to think of as  _really, really hot,_ and when they leave the bathroom, Marc doesn’t look bored anymore.

-

Spring break comes around and Elena convinces Marc to go with her to New York and meet with advertisers, so they go, and Elena feels ridiculous, like a kid in her mother’s clothes, playing at being a grown up. Marc doesn’t help matters and neither does Christopher, who climbs into bed with her at night in the hotel and puts his tongue in her mouth and his hand in her pants and tells her to  _sshhhh, baby, Marc’s right next door, she’ll hear you._

The meetings go terribly and Marc doesn’t seem to care and Elena feels more and more useless the longer they’re there.

And then there’s Shauna Parker, Shauna  _fucking_ Parker, and god, Elena fucking hates her. She’s not jealous, really she’s not, or maybe she is, but it doesn’t matter, she just  _hates her._ By the end of the dinner Marc is staring at Shauna like she’s made of pure gold and Elena just wants to scream. There’s a tense cab ride and  _you want to end the party at eleven_ and they go home on Friday and Christopher invites her to a party Saturday night but she doesn’t go, because she has a week’s worth of holiday homework to do.

-

The chicken happens.

Marc stops saying ‘we.’

She hates everything.

-

Junior year ends. She’s offered an internship in New York, but she’s not sure. Marc asks for more money to go to California. She doesn’t say ‘we.’ Elena gives her the money and takes the internship and tries not to feel like it’s the beginning of the end.

-

She quits the internship on the first day. Her father doesn’t talk to her for a week. She spends all her time trying to find advertisers. Chris calls her sometimes from California. Dusty sends her texts in the middle of the night, things like ‘ _marc got us a pool & it is glorious i swear i love this pool’ _and  _‘marc hasn’t slept in 2 days Lena make her sleep she is RUINING MY LIFE!!!!’_

Marc calls her too, but their phone calls are short and awkward. It’s always obvious that Marc would rather be coding, that she’s hardly listening to anything Elena says. Marc and Dusty inform her that when the summer’s over, they’re going to stay in California, do senior year there.

Christopher gets weird. He texts her too often, calls her constantly. When she hangs out with other guys, he turns so red she expects steam to come out of his ears.

She is so, so tired.

-

She goes to California. Marc forgets to pick her up and Shauna Parker is setting up meetings, Shauna Parker is doing her job, Shauna Parker is living in the house she’s paying for, and  _God,_ she hates Shauna Parker so much.

Marc says ‘how’s the internship’ and Marc says ‘I want – I want – I need you out here’ and Marc says ‘I’m afraid you’re going to get left behind’ and not once does Marc say ‘we.’

The bank teller says, “Can I see some ID?” and Elena hands it over before she can change her mind.

-

She breaks up with Christopher after he almost burns her apartment down. Marc screams at her over the phone and then says, ‘I have some good news’ and ‘I need my CFO’ and then she says ‘we did it’ and Elena is so, so tired, but she’s smiling, she can’t stop smiling, because Marc said ‘we.’

-

She goes to California and signs the papers.

Everything is good until it’s not anymore.

-

Marc says, “You’re going to blame me, because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business decision?” and Elena wants to scream that she never got to make  _any_ business decisions, Marc never let her, but instead she says ‘it’s gonna be like I’m not a part of facebook’ and she says ‘my name’s on the masthead’ and she says ‘you better  _lawyer up,_ you  _bitch,_ because I’m not coming back for thirty percent, I’m coming back for  _everything’_ and she says  _‘_ I like standing next to you, Shauna, it makes me look so tough.’

She goes home and wishes she’d punched Shauna for real. Dusty calls and she doesn’t answer.

-

She is tired  _all the time._ Her father isn’t talking to her and she’s trying to balance her senior year while also flying across the country to participate in  _two_ lawsuits and Chris keeps giving her worried looks when they see each other in class but they aren’t talking and Dusty keeps calling but she never answers because she knows that Dusty is with Marc and she  _can’t,_ she just can’t.

-

Marc settles. She’s not surprised.

She’s not happy either.

She thinks she would have been happy if Marc had just said  _‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’_  She wouldn’t even have to apologize for doing it, just for the fact that it hurt her. That would be enough.

She has recurring dreams about Marc sitting across that table, shrugging her shoulders and saying,  _‘oops.’_

-

She graduates. She goes to Harvard. She and Chris start speaking again. She starts reluctantly taking Dusty’s calls. Her father starts speaking to her again, her mother starts asking if she has a boyfriend.

Marc doesn’t try to contact her. She’s not sure if that bothers her or not.

-

And then. _And then_.

And then there is the summer before her sophomore year at Harvard. Chris is weird. Chris hisses into her cell phone, things like ‘you can’t do that, no, you just can’t’ and Elena knows from the way she casts nervous glances around her that she is talking to Marc. She and Chris go to parties and one time they get very drunk and kiss and Chris says, “I didn’t even know you were gay,” and Elena says, “hmmmm,” and then Chris kisses her again and Elena says, “no, no, no, I can’t, I –“ and then she cries and Chris says, “I know, it’s okay, I know,” and Elena passes out and the next day Chris is even more angry when she hisses, “ _I’m not fucking kidding, you cannot do that, do you understand me_?” into her cell phone.

-

Sophomore year starts. For the first week things are normal, except for the fact that every time she starts a conversation with Chris, Chris looks absolutely terrified, like she thinks every conversation is going to have bad news or something. She would ask what’s going on, but she’s afraid of the answer, so she just keeps pretending she doesn’t notice until –

She’s holding a six pack in one arm and her textbooks in the other and balancing them precariously as she tries to open the door to Chris’s dorm, because they have a study-slash-drinking date, when the door opens and she looks up, expecting to see Chris, but instead she sees sharp cheek bones and blue eyes and curly hair that is longer than she remembers.

“Marc,” She gasps, and Marc nods and takes the six pack from her helpfully, like it’s no big deal that she’s in Chris’s dorm.

“Hey, Lena.” She says, and Elena flinches, clutches her textbooks. She can see Dusty behind Marc, sitting on the couch. She turns around and smiles sheepishly. Chris comes into the room, pulling her hair up into a ponytail as she walks in and then freezes when she sees what’s going on. Marc says, “Are you going to come in or…?”

Elena blinks stupidly at her and then says, “Or. Definitely or.” Marc looks at her like that’s a stupid thing to say and something in Elena snaps. “What the fuck are you doing here?” 

Chris says, “Lena –“ at the same time that Dusty says, “Marc, maybe you should –“ and Marc says, “Dusty and I transferred here from Stanford.”

Suddenly all of Chris’s angry phone calls make sense. Elena wants to turn on Chris and say, ‘why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’ and she wants to shout at Dusty for not mentioning this in one of her emails and she wants to curse and swear at Marc, but instead she says, “I’m surprised you managed to tear yourself away from Facebook.”

Marc shrugs, leans back against the back of the couch like they’re having a normal friendly conversation. “Facebook is pretty stable.” She says, “It’ll be fine without us. And anyways, Shauna’s still there and –“

Elena turns around and walks away. She doesn’t see any of them again for three days.

-

She sees Chris first. Chris apologizes for not telling her. Dusty apologizes, too. She says, “I wanted to tell you, I really did, but Marc and, well...“ and Elena gets it, so she nods, and she’s mad for a while, but she gets over it.

She and Dusty and Chris get drinks and it’s kind of like highschool except for the part where it’s not like highschool at all.

And then Marc is pounding on her door at three in the morning and Elena opens the door in a t-shirt and an old pair of Christopher’s boxers and says, “What the fuck do you want, Marc?”

Marc looks exhausted as she pushes her curls out of her face and says, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I miss you. Can we just – not? Because I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to – hurt you. I just wanted. Facebook was my baby and I couldn’t and – I really miss you.”

Elena is exhausted and she’s so tired of being angry, really, really tired of being angry, because holding grudges is hard, and Marc has just said everything she wanted her to say, before, during the depositions, but – but. But it feels like it might be too late. She stares at a spot on the wall behind Marc’s head and Marc says, “You swore. Lena, you promised.”

She smiles then, just a little smile, except then it turns into a grin and then she’s laughing, really laughing, clutching at her stomach as she pulls Marc into a hug and says, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

-

Things are okay. They’re alright. Mostly. Sometimes Elena gets mad and sometimes Marc gets mad back, but that’s normal, really, it’s healthy. Elena thinks it’s healthier than things used to be, back when she would just agree with Marc because it was easier than arguing. They have game nights again, like they used to, and Elena still wins at Mario Kart and Marc still accuses her of cheating.

Elena is happy. And that’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

She officially tells the three of them that she is bi, and Chris rolls her eyes like  _I know,_ and Dusty says, “yeah, Chris told me about – well,” and Marc looks at the rest of them funny and then says, “Cool,” and then they play Call of Duty.

-

Elena’s parents are in Europe on business over spring break, which means she can’t go home, which means she has nowhere to go, so she goes home with Marc. She’s afraid it’s going to be awkward, but then it’s not, because Marc’s mom pulls her into a hug the second she walks into the door and then starts force feeding her ice cream because, “You’re so skinny, good lord, don’t they feed you at Harvard?!”

She sleeps in Marc’s room, on Marc’s bed, with Marc’s shoulder pressed against hers and more often than not she wakes up with Marc starfished across the bed, one arm thrown out over her chest.

Marc’s father’s birthday happens to fall on the last day of break, and that night she and Marc get  _very_ drunk and they sit on Marc’s bedroom floor, eating left over birthday cake and laughing about how stupid they were in high school and how stupid they maybe still are.

At some point, Elena makes Marc laugh so hard she can’t breathe, and she leans forward, gasping for air and puts a hand on Elena’s thigh and when she looks back up, Elena leans forward and kisses her.

Marc tastes like chocolate cake and vodka and Elena keeps kissing her, and Marc kisses back for a moment and then she pulls back, takes her hand off of Elena’s thigh and says, “You’re drunk.”

Elena says, very intelligently, “Mmmmm,” and then leans forward to try and kiss her again. She misses, ends up pressing a kiss to the corner of Marc’s lips and before she can correct it, Marc gets up and gets into bed.

“Goodnight, Lena.”

Elena stretches out on the floor and says, “Your carpet smells like peppermint.”

-

It’s happen again. It keeps happening, in fact, so many times that Elena loses count. They get drunk and Elena kisses Marc and every time, Marc kisses back and then says ‘you’re drunk,’ and gets up and goes to bed or picks up her laptop and codes or starts writing an essay.

Chris gives them funny looks sometimes and Dusty keeps nudging Elena with her shoulder at random times and saying, “seriously, Lena,  _seriously,”_ apropos of nothing.

Sometimes when she’s in her dorm by herself, she thinks of Marc saying ‘you’re drunk’ and wants to punch herself in the face.

-

The four of them go to the fair. They ride bumper cars and Marc is atrocious at steering, she keeps getting her car stuck and then swearing. Dusty insists on going on the Ferris wheel and Chris tries to fight it, because Chris is afraid of heights, but they go anyways and Elena ends up squeezed in next to Marc.

At the top of the Ferris wheel, she thinks of kissing Marc. She doesn’t.

They go out for drinks after the fair and she thinks of kissing Marc again, but then she thinks of Marc saying, ‘you’re drunk,’ and she doesn’t do it then, either.

-

Marc texts her after her last final asking if she wants to hang out before they go home for the summer. She doesn’t bother to text back, just shows up with a six pack and a pizza. She knocks on the door and Marc answers in her underwear, apparently just out of the shower, because she’s drying her hair one handed with a towel. She says, “Hey, come in, you don’t have to knock,” and Elena leans forward, still holding the beer and the pizza and kisses her.

They kiss for a while. Longer than a while. They kiss until they’re both breathless and then Marc pulls back and says, “Are you drunk?” and Elena says, “No,” and Marc groans and kisses her again. Marc’s hands are all over her, slipping underneath her shirt and sliding up her back and then she’s pulling away again and hissing, “Lena, why aren’t you  _touching me?”_

Elena laughs and says, “My hands are full, Marc.”

And then Dusty walks in and sees them there, faces centimeters apart and says, “Oh my god,  _finally,_ Jesus you guys are idiots, it took you long enough,” and Chris hears and pokes her head out from her bedroom and then squeals excitedly and says, “Let’s celebrate with pizza and beer!”

So they do. And it’s a lot like highschool and a lot like the last few months except that now when Marc laughs and leans into Elena, Elena runs a hand through her hair and leans down and kisses her.

And it’s nice. It's good.

It’s really, really good.

 


End file.
